Pizzerias in New York are forced to pay hundreds of thousands in claims for theft of wages

Meet the real pizza rats of New York.

According to numerous lawsuits filed on behalf of the workers.

Eateries ranging from establishments like L&B Spumoni Gardens to hipster upstart Roberta have been sued, sometimes multiple times, ending in hundreds of thousands in settlements often paid to undocumented immigrants, mostly from South and Central America, that serve many cities . pizzerias.

Even Lombardi’s of Little Italy, ostensibly the first pizzeria in the United States, settled a $75,000 lawsuit in 2021 against six workers who sued for wage theft claims.

Restaurants have often settled claims with their employees without admitting wrongdoing, and some of them go back to court to settle the same issues again.

L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn.

Jordan Sapon, 22, had never eaten pizza before he immigrated to New York from his hometown in Guatemala in 2016 at the age of 14.

As an undocumented worker, he got a taste for it in 2018 when he took a job at Francesco’s Pizza at 186 Columbus Avenue, a casual eatery four blocks north of Lincoln Center.

Starting at age 16, he devoted the next six years to the restaurant, doing everything from mopping floors and cleaning to folding pizza boxes, making pies and delivering them, usually working 72 hours, five days a week, according to looming wage theft. The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan Federal Court.

According to him, it was exhausting work.

“It’s a really big workload and there was always a lot to do,” Sapon told Daily News. “The worst part was that they didn’t give us enough time to eat. They didn’t care, they just made us work.”

Sapon, who is undocumented, said he needed a job, so he continued to work overtime.

According to his federal lawsuit, he regularly worked 12-hour shifts for his starting salary of $50 a day in 2016, less than half the $10.50 minimum wage required in New York City for small businesses. By the time he left the restaurant, he was earning $110 a day, still about a dollar less than the minimum wage, not including overtime pay, court documents show.

Sapon said his meager income was hard to live on. He shared an apartment in Brooklyn with his brother, cousins, and nephew, and they learned how to pull a dollar.

“Basically, you just have to live very, very densely, not spend anything that you don’t need to spend,” he said.

According to numerous lawsuits filed on behalf of the workers.

Sapon, who worked for Francesco with his cousins, said they complained to owner Vito Rappa that they were overworked.

“They just said he was busy and [we] I had to work, there’s nothing else you can do,” Sapon said. “Sometimes it was so bad that the workers were just beginning to feel weak from such hard work.”

He quit his job in August and filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court in November, which is still pending. This is the second wage theft lawsuit brought against Francesco’s owners in five years.

“They simply cannot go unpunished,” Sapon said.

People wait for tables outside Roberta's restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  The restaurant is one of many noisy establishments that don't have reservations, which means people will have to wait in long lines to get inside.  (Pearl Gable/New York Daily News)

Under the settlement, in April 2019, the restaurant agreed to pay $87,500 in damages to two of its former employees for non-payment of overtime and other labor law violations.

By agreement, Francesco’s owners admitted no wrongdoing.

According to court records, Vito Rappa’s owner, along with his son-in-law Francesco Nanie, pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe an immigration officer in 2008. Federal prosecutors arrested him and a dozen others as part of a wide-ranging investigation into the Gambino crime family. Rappa did not respond to a request for comment.

Sapon’s lawyer, Lou Pechman, said his client’s case was too ordinary.

“We had wage theft cases against pizzerias in every neighborhood. Pizza is ubiquitous in New York City, but unfortunately, wage theft is just as common,” Pechman said. “Not surprisingly, the most recent immigrants are the most likely targets for wage theft.”

Last year, the New York State Attorney General granted a $175,000 lawsuit against the owners of Gotham Pizza, which has restaurants in Yorkville, the Upper East Side and Chelsea, after he was accused of robbing 10 workers who were not being paid minimum wage. payment or after some time. Most employees were earning $6 an hour between 2016 and 2019, $1.50 less than they were due, minus tips.

A pizza is put into the oven at Lombardi's restaurant in Little Italy.

Attorney General Letitia James has agreed not to prosecute Gotham owner Mikhail Shamailov for violating labor laws in exchange for paying and sharing his bookkeeping for the next six years.

Harold Seligman, a lawyer who represented Gotham, said his client never admitted to any wrongdoing and decided not to take the matter to court.

“We agreed with the Attorney General because it was expensive to continue the lawsuit and there was a threat of criminal prosecution and civil exposure,” he said. “We deny that we underpaid them, including overtime.”

He said AG was initially looking for almost $1 million in back payroll but settled for a much smaller amount.

“The employer is very scared that he can face this,” he said. “[Pizzerias] give these people a job opportunity when they can’t find work elsewhere [because they are undocumented]”.

James’s office denied that there had been a significant cut in compensation and stated that Gotham’s owner could not justify underpaying the workers.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James at a press conference in Manhattan last July.

The problem is not limited to Manhattan.

Hipster pizzeria Roberta’s in Brooklyn, which received rave reviews in The New York Times, gave out $317,000 in 2017 after workers filed a class action lawsuit alleging they were not being paid.

And Gravesend L&B Supmoni Gardens, known for its hardy cheese-topped pizza, filed $75,000 in 2018 after being accused of improperly compensating its employees.

Both L&B and Roberta’s denied wage theft in court filings but did not respond to requests for comment for the story.

“There is no excuse for flagrant violations of labor laws, but we must remember that some labor laws in restaurants are too complex, and minor violations can result in serious fines for employers, which is why we regularly issue compliance notices and offer trainings that thousands of restaurateurs read and visit,” said NYC Hospitality Alliance Executive Director Andrew Righi.

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